I can't tell from the guides or the site, is Migadu running a hosted email system? Anyone tried it yet? If it is hosted, I wonder what their deliverability rates and reliability look like?
I just set up a test to see how it works. The UI is pretty clean, and yes, it's hosted email. No idea how reliable they will be.
Here are some issues:
They are not picking up DNS changes in a timely fashion, specifically I confirmed all of the DNS changes they requested were made and published to all name servers, but their system is not picking up the changes, which means they could be caching the results or asking a caching resolver when checking the results.
They also have some DNS weirdness going on for their migadu.com zone which they probably should fix:
; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> @ns1.migadu.com migadu.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34597
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 16
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;migadu.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
migadu.com. 300 IN A 94.23.26.57
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
migadu.com. 300 IN NS ns1.migadu.com.
migadu.com. 300 IN NS ns2.migadu.com.
migadu.com. 300 IN NS ns1.migadu.com.
migadu.com. 300 IN NS ns2.migadu.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.migadu.com. 300 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns1.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 188.166.110.130
ns2.migadu.com. 300 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
ns2.migadu.com. 259200 IN A 162.243.253.115
;; Query time: 311 msec
;; SERVER: 188.166.110.130#53(188.166.110.130)
;; WHEN: Thu Feb 25 12:18:22 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 364
Their webmail client is pretty basic. Using the refresh did not work well (spinning busy icon). It's a lot to ask to have a good webmail client in addition to handling email deliverability well.
I sent myself a test email a few minutes ago and so far it's not come through in their web UI.
Bottom line: it's an early product in a very challenging operational space, so I'd keep an eye on them but would think twice about relying on it for production use.
Hi @aeden, Dejan from Migadu here. Thanks for the check-up :) Migadu has to pickup the DNS changes in order to activate the domain, otherwise it won't accept mails for it.
Webmail, yes quite basic, we're hoping to make it even more basic. No intentions to replace GMail :)
Is there such a thing for self-hosting as well? As a sysadmin, the time I'm dealing with dovecot, postfix, exim and the whole lot feels like the stuff I'll be watching reruns of for eternity down in hell.
Can I send email as admin@mysite.com through this (actual site is hosted on Linode)? I've been using mandrillapp for this purpose, but it is going paid-only so I'm looking for alternatives.
Actually, you can also with Migadu, for free. You'll just get a "Sent via Migadu" signature on the bottom. And almost free without the signature :)
However, if you need to send thousands of messages a day, you are probably sending automated mails, transactional or newsletters. Migadu is not intended for that, just as Gmail isn't.
You don't need Mailgun for that either, you can setup your own server to send mails on DO, or go for Amazon SES (Simple Email Service), cost is negligible.
Very simple reason: have a separate email for each website that requires a signup. That way, you'll know directly which website leaked your email address to some spammers.
Whoops. Looks like I totally misread that OP. Yeah... aliases is what I was thinking about as well.
Although, separate email adresses in conjunction with a catch-all are better. After all, with an alias, you can just cut the recipient's address off just before the + which isn't that big a hurdle to spammers...
Most aliases require adding explicitly. The primary feature of the catchall address is that it is a blacklist rather than whitelist for aliases.
Gmail style + aliases (which don't require explicit adding) are almost as good, but can be easily and silently stripped and generally notify the receiver that a filtering situation is happening on the other end.
Maybe set up an option to enable it if it's easy to implement? Because people make typos or you might want to make up addresses on the fly similarly to mailinator (but with corporate addresses).
The downside is that you will catch all spam too, and more importantly you will not bounce back the message to the sender informing them they've sent to the wrong address.
Sure, I'd be happy to share my use case, especially if it might improve support for this workflow =)
I've been using a catch all email address on my primary domain for 15 years. Yes, I get some spam to things like sales@domain.com, etc, but it tends to be actual companies sending small amounts of legitimate-ish ads for services that my business apparently needs, not the reams of viagra ads and phishing that one might imagine. Most of the spam I get is to email addresses that I have given to another organization or advertised somewhere. The biggest culprits are the contact email address listed on my website / domain name whois records and a handful of sleazy companies that have clearly sold my email address to spammers. :P
My email workflow is to provide unique addresses to each place that requires an email address. Why? It is a flexible and low maintenance method of managing email routing, both legitimate and spam. More precisely:
1. Security. Unique addresses make it harder to link a leaked account dump from one service to another. Not impossible, obviously most of the addresses share the domain part, but it foils simple matching.
2. Cleanly blacklist individual addresses. I buy something from company X. Company X signs up me up to 18 of their mailing lists. No amount of unsubscribe button fixes this. I can just blacklist that address. More commonly, Company X is a bit shady to begin with or has an account breach that leaks their user list or goes belly up and someone else buys their accumulated personal data. Blocking the emails at the address level is a lot cleaner than trying to black list individual senders as any given company might have many addresses, spammers obviously use a different address every time, etc.
3. Easily route legit messages. This lets me adjust where different groups of addresses are delivered. If I want to make a new mailbox/folder that has all of my "quasi-legit" spam. I.e. ads from companies I actually buy stuff from. Or a set of email addresses that I give only to VIP senders that get privileged alerts on my devices. I can make a mailbox and route a whitelist of address to each. I know what addresses I gave out. I could try and route based on sender address or text keywords but that is a lot more work, more error prone, more messy. Again, people and companies change addresses, the ones I give out don't.
4. Low friction for the default case. The ratio of addresses I end up blocking is small compared to the set that I give out. Most email addresses get maybe 5-10 messages in their lifetime. The friction of going to a computer and explicitly creating a new mailbox is simply too high for this sort of arrangement to work. In my workflow right now the default (addresses not matched by a real mailbox, forwarder, or blacklist are routed to a catchall mailbox) is the correct behavior for 95% of cases. When I want something different (forwarder, blacklist) I can add that explicitly, when it is convenient. It is not convenient to add email addresses/forwarders when I am sitting in some companies office being asked for my email address on a paper form.
4.5. Wife less tolerant of technical friction than I am. My wife uses this system as well. She would never go add a new email address manually for everything but does enjoy the ability to have an address blocked or reliably and selectively route some address to her mailbox vs mine.
This use workflow is likely not common so I certainly don't expect widespread support for it. Today I use a shared hosting provider to do this. I don't use the web hosting at all, just use it for email since I haven't found a good dedicated email service that supports this workflow. I don't like this setup because I'd really rather have better email related features (better TLS support, better IPv6 support, 2FA, a web control panel focused around email, etc would all be nice). I've toyed with setting up my own email setup on a VPS but would really rather just pay someone else to do it. Have yet to find a dedicated email provider that would support this workflow though. =\
Why did you guys choose for a 'Pro' plan instead of pay what you use?
I have a small webdev agency with 25 clients, who together send more than 100 mails a day. Currently I use a managed VPS for that, but I want to move to something that is fully managed, scalable and has a great API.
Not to bash on the 'Pro' plan. Just curious on why, and I hope you guys offer 'pay what you use' in the future. The service looks promising.
Honestly, the limitation is there so we start a conversation, and figure out a better pricing. It's easy to slam 10 different plans on the page, but it just adds to the confusion, and none to the learning. We're maybe overthinking simplification...
If you think Migadu could work for your agency, lets get in touch, the limit of 100 is customizable.
I don't understand the question: Gmail has one address and it is not on your domain? Can you elaborate please?
Simple use case: you've got several startup projects with different domains, and multiple addresses on it. Migadu makes that painless. Family domain with emails for the whole family? Easy.
And..of course there are many alternatives. No intention to reinvent email here. Just making things more pleasurable to manage and use, by getting them out of the way.
I mean, with Mailgun you can have inbound email addresses on your domain forwarded to a Gmail inbox, for example, and Gmail also allows you to send email on behalf of those imported email addresses.
Good idea, but don't you think it can get a bit crazy if you need to do that for multiple persons on multiple domains?
We were also doing similar combinations for our startup projects via Google Apps and Mandrill, but it was getting very messy. I just wanted a new domain / new email address, fast. Nothing else. Somehow I would end up with multiple Google accounts, and then Google cut of the free accounts... Interestingly, Mandrill announced the same thing today. I'd rather give up two cups of coffee a month and not waste brainwaves and worries on this admin.
Migadu is meant to get email admin out of people's way so they can focus on more important stuff.
